History of Geographic Information Systems, with Applications in Water Resources Planning and Management

Elements of computerized spatial analysis have been used in water resources since the mid '60s, and sophisticated and complex systems incorporating geographic information systems (GIS) and modeling technology were developed, tested, and applied to a wide variety of projects starting in the early '70s. The findings of the early developers, that GIS technology must support complex engineering modeling, and that it must provide representations of terrain and network information, as well as 2-dimensional information (soils, land cover, etc.), for it to be of use in water resources applications, are still valid today.